On July 26, 2021, AFA’s Secretary-General Ms. Estrella Penunia delivered an opening speech during the UNFSS Plenary’s Opening Session. With the theme “A Bold Ambition to Improve Food Systems,” Ms. Penunia highlighted the current state of our global food systems, and she emphasized what being bold means for small-scale food...

As the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic continues to claim lives, ruin the health and livelihoods of millions across the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in South Asia at present, a team of veterinary scientists, epidemiologists, sociologists and other One Health experts is beginning a two week session to map out a five year plan...

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) introduced the Farmer Field School (FFS) approach in 1989 to educate farmers on improved agricultural practices. The FFS approach has been used widely where a season-long school is established for farmers to engage in group learning and training activities. As...

Existing health and community nutrition systems have the potential to deliver many nutrition interventions. However, the coverage of nutrition interventions across the delivery platforms of these systems has not been uniform. We (1) examined the opportunity gaps between delivery platforms and corresponding nutrition interventions through the continuum of care in...

Conservation Agriculture (CA), No-till method of farming which is climate smart, increases organic carbon of the soil, essentially are generative agricultural practice, considerably increases productivity of the land and adds to the amazing happiness & confidence of the farmer." The Saguna Regenerative Technique (SRT) cultivation method was evolved in 2011...

Sandeep Narayan Jamjade is a farmer residing in Jalochi Village, Baramati, and Pune, India. He is 37 years old with a family of 11. He started his farming venture when he was 24. It took him years of trial and error to adopt various practical solutions leading to ecologically sustainable agricultural...

The practice of natural agriculture focuses on biodiversity preservation and promotes seed conservation.  This approach emphasizes the environment's fundamental characteristics and supports the Satoyama concept that integrates ecological compatibility among landscape and seascape management. In this session, part of the Oxford Real Farming Conference 2021 programme, Shumei Natural Agriculture presented a virtual tour of natural agriculture farms...

Aquaculture is vital for feeding the world's expanding population and the conference is considering a range of issues and opportunities ranging from traditional family farming in vulnerable communities to cutting-edge technology.  Themes to be discussed at the conference include: innovation, genetic resources, biosecurity, the social and human dimension, value chains...

Understanding how the Papua New Guinea (PNG) agricultural economy and associated household consumption is affected by climate, market and other shocks requires attention to linkages and substitution effects across various products and the markets in which they are traded. In this study, we use a multi-market simulation model of the...

Climate change is increasingly experienced in Southeast Asia in the form of rising temperatures, longer periods of hot weather, prolonged droughts, more powerful typhoons, and extreme rainfall. Farmers in many parts of the region are facing degradation of arable land, shortage of water, increased occurrence of pests and diseases, declines...

This policy brief is one in a series led by Chulalongkorn University with support from the Office of the Higher Education Commission, Ministry of Education, Thailand, in partnership with FAO. The series was initiated to support the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Work Plan on Education, 2016–2020 implementation while...

Maize is most important food crop after rice and wheat contributing towards national food security with an annual production of 28.7 million metric tonnes. The major maize producing states are Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Maize is a relatively less water demanding crop and gives higher yield...

This monthly e-newsletter gives a bird’s eye view of all the exciting updates from Access Agriculture, a world-leading organisation for quality agricultural training videos in international and local languages, working across the Global South. The Access Agriculture Panorama features information on new videos, audio podcasts, blog posts, articles contributed by experts,...

Impacts of climate change are location-specific, hence the need to develop targeted solutions and strategies. Local government units, in partnership with the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, established farmer learning groups which are platforms for knowledge generation and sharing on climate change action-research. The project was implemented in learning communities...

In 2020, Solidaridad Asia scaled up efforts to improve productivity and resilience. Our efforts focused on creating capacities to foster income and food security. To achieve our goals, we relied on digital solutions and our extensive partnerships to deliver transformative interventions to our beneficiaries in the region.

The SIANI Expert Group Wild Foods, Biodiversity and Livelihood works to consolidate traditional ecological knowledge about wild foods in Asia and link it with policy arenas relevant to food security, poverty reduction, and sustainable forest management. On January 22,  2021, the group had a discussion synthesizing common threads across Asia regarding food systems and wild...

The health conscious urbanites are moving towards growing their own food. Starting as a hobby, urban farming is evolving as a necessary means to address issues of food security, physical and emotional well being. This calls for improved access to information and intensive knowledge exchange through diverse and emerging media. Urbanisation...

The paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the changes witnessed in the forest sector in China during the last three decades and the key drivers that have contributed to the country’s forest transition. Clearly, such a transition is an outcome of the convergence of several factors, including the emergence of...

Over centuries, ethnic minority communities in the north of Vietnam have developed complex farming systems well-adapted to their environments. Much of this is based on indigenous knowledge concerned with adapting to locally-available resources and more recently enhancing resiliency to climatic risk. This article draws from data gathered with mixed qualitative...

Over the past few decades nutrition transition has occurred in Pacific Islands Countries (PICS), influencing the health profile of Pacific Islands populations and resulting in significant rates of diet related noncommunicable diseases (DR-NCD). In most PICS, including Fiji, imported processed foods, in particular refined rice, flour products, sugar, fatty meats,...